Jeff
asked
Olen Steinhauer:
I found the sections in "An American Spy" dealing with the spy in China extremely refreshing. Any thoughts of writing a spy novel from a non-US perspective? Also, thanks for the many hours of great reading you've given. I'm not terribly old yet, but I've still come to the realization that I have a finite number of readable books left. So I'd rather spend most of my time on great books.
Olen Steinhauer
Thank you, Jeff--very kind words. I'm very pleased to hear you enjoyed that section. I was quite pleased with it, though not everyone was. "100 pages full of Chinese names?!" "Where's Milo?!" But hopefully by the end of the book readers understood why I did what I did.
As for writing from a non-US perspective, I actually did that for my first five novels. They cover the length of the Cold War from the other side of the Iron Curtain. "The Tourist," my sixth, was the first novel I wrote an American perspective.
I wrote those books because while I was interested in writing about the Cold War, I was tired of always reading of characters motivated by Western ideals--it had been done to death, and done better than I could do it. I was also interested in the ideology of 20th century communism, and the idea that there were people who had devoted their entire lives to something that, by 1989-90, collapsed completely. I wondered how that kind of disappointment would rattle someone, the idea that your entire life's work had been rendered moot. It piqued my curiosity.
So while I wrote from a non-US perspective, I also wrote from an historical perspective, which made my task significantly easier. With Xin Zhu in "American Spy" it was harder, but at least I was on similar political ground so could begin there.
As for my general thoughts on the practice, to me the central social benefit of fiction is empathy, the ability to make us understand those who are not like us. Maybe that's a CIA agent, or a terrorist, or simply someone who works for the betterment of his own country rather than ours. I think writing from another nation's perspective is not only a worthy project but advances the primary virtue of fiction writing--which sounds quite grandiose, but there it is!
As for writing from a non-US perspective, I actually did that for my first five novels. They cover the length of the Cold War from the other side of the Iron Curtain. "The Tourist," my sixth, was the first novel I wrote an American perspective.
I wrote those books because while I was interested in writing about the Cold War, I was tired of always reading of characters motivated by Western ideals--it had been done to death, and done better than I could do it. I was also interested in the ideology of 20th century communism, and the idea that there were people who had devoted their entire lives to something that, by 1989-90, collapsed completely. I wondered how that kind of disappointment would rattle someone, the idea that your entire life's work had been rendered moot. It piqued my curiosity.
So while I wrote from a non-US perspective, I also wrote from an historical perspective, which made my task significantly easier. With Xin Zhu in "American Spy" it was harder, but at least I was on similar political ground so could begin there.
As for my general thoughts on the practice, to me the central social benefit of fiction is empathy, the ability to make us understand those who are not like us. Maybe that's a CIA agent, or a terrorist, or simply someone who works for the betterment of his own country rather than ours. I think writing from another nation's perspective is not only a worthy project but advances the primary virtue of fiction writing--which sounds quite grandiose, but there it is!
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Mar 23, 2015 04:13PM · flag